Piano Concertos 2, 3, 4 – Beethoven

by richibi

for everyone, with great gratitude, who reads me, I mean only to bring poetry, which is to say, lightthough I’d considered leaving the Romantic Piano Concertos behindto explore other areas of the periodin this survey, it seemed unfair, indeed remiss of me, not to include the threeamong my top ten that I haven’t yet highlighted, Beethoven’s 2nd,3rd, and 4th Piano Concertos, Opuses 19, 37, and 58respectively,after all, these are where the spirit of the age, the Zeitgeist, was constructed, like a building, with walls, windows, a hearth, all of which would become a church, then a Church, and by the time of Brahms, avery Romantic Cathedral

the foundation had already been laid by Mozart with his 27, but music had not yet become anything other than an entertainment by then, or alternatively, an accessory to ceremonial pomp and circumstance, see Handel and England for this, or liturgical stuff, see, among many others here, Bach

but with the turn towards independence of thought as theEnlightenment progressed, cultural power devolved from the prelates, and their reverent representations, to the nobles, who wanted their own art, music, which is to say, something secular, therefore the Classical Period, 1750 – 1800, in round figures

then in the middle of all that, 1789,the French Revolution happened, and the field was ripe for prophets, anyone with a message of hope, and a metaphysical direction, midst all the existential disarray – the Ageof Reason had set the way, theoretically, for the possibility of a world without God, something, or Something, was needed to replace the The Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, Who had been seeing Their supremacy contested since already the Reformation

Beethoven turned out to be justour man, don’t take my, but history‘s authentification of it, see the veryRomantic Period for corroboration

in a word, Beethoven established a Faith, a Vision, not to mention the appropriate tools to instal this new perspective, a sound, howeverinherited, musical structure – his Piano Concertos Two, Three, and Four, for instance, are paramount amongst a host of others of his transcendental revelations

briefly, the initial voice, I am here, in the first movement, is declamatory, even imperious, but ever compositionally solid, and proven, tempo, tonality, recapitulation, the materials haven’t changed from the earlier Classical epoch, just the design, the interior, the metaphysical conception

his construction is masterfullydirect, the line of music is throughout ever clear and concise, despite flights of, often, ethereal, even magical, speculation, you don’t feel the music in your body as you would in a dance, as in the earlier era, of minuets, but follow it, rather, with your intellect, you,nearly irresistibly, read it

but the adagio, the slow movement, the middle one Classically, is always, for me, the clincher, the movement that delivers the incontrovertible humanity that gave power to the Romantic poet, who touched you where you live

Beethoven says life is difficult, andeventually, at the end of his Early, Middle and Late Periods, life may even have no meaningbut should there be someone, he says, who is listening, Someone – though implicit is that one may be speaking to merely the wind – this is what I can do, this is who I amand while I am here, however briefly, I am not insignificant, I can be worthy, even glorious, even beautiful, I am no less consequential, thus, nor precious, than a flower